LESSON 4: FRETTING HAND TECHNIQUE
Hi, it is Paul Wolfe from how-to-play-bass.com. This is the fourth lesson of my virtual DVD on how to play the base for beginners. Before we get started, I want to recommend that you head in to my website, how-to-play-bass.com and sign up for the free monthly easy. It is totally free and features articles, real live bass lines for you to learn and play and loads of other cool stuff.
Okay, in today’s lesson we are going to look at basic fretting hand technique. By the way, if you are a left handed then I am keep saying left hand technique, please do not get offended. Most people are right handed are right handed, that is why I use those terms. Anyway, there are four things that we are going to look at for left hand technique. Good left hand position using the finger tips to fret a note, one finger for fret and digital independence. There is a PDF that goes with this lesson that you can download. It is a more detailed look at what we are going to cover, features, the independence exercise, it is well worth downloading, reading, as well as reviewing this video.
Anyway, good left hand position is mainly about the position of your thumb. You have your thumb too high in the back of your guitar. It craps your hand like this and restricts your finger movement. If you have it too low, it becomes stretched to fret notes on the lower strings. So the best position is to have your thumb on and around the apex of the curve of the back of your guitar. This gives you maximum flexibility for your fingers, but still gives you a solid anchor for your left hand.
The second part of good left hand technique is fretting notes with the fingertips of your left hand. The way you do this is that your finger should slightly curl presenting the fingertips to the fret board. Guitarist’s fingers are much straighter. Play guitar before your transitioning to base. Do not copy that. You do not need to play bar chords. You get much better control using the fingertips plus you will find you get a better tone to the note that you produce.
The third part of good left hand technique is to observe the one finger for fret rule. This simply means that whatever position of the finger of what you are playing at, that each finger should cover a fret, like this. Now, if you have got a big scale base, this can be quite tricky especially close to the notes, but as with all things diligent practice will get you there.
Okay, we have come to the meet of this lesson, the digital independence exercise. Again, make sure you have downloaded the PDF that goes with this video. It has got more detail about this exercise. Basically, the digital independence exercise combines all the things we have talked about and also the works on making sure that the notes produced by each of your fretting hand fingers sound the same and that there are no weak fretting hand fingers. The way the exercise works is this. You will assign a number to each of your fingers. So your index finger is one, the middle finger is two, the ring finger is three and you pinky is four and then you systemically play through every possible combination o those numbers, EG 1-2-3-4, then 1-2-4-3, then 1-3-2-4, then 1-3-4-3, and so on and so on. Before this is printed by forwards and backwards in the PDF. This is one play through on the G string looks and sounds like.
So that is left hand technique. If you do the digital independence exercise everyday, you will soon find that you will develop speed, accuracy and strength in your left hand and this will all help when it comes to learning tunes. Do not forget to head over to the website at how-to-play-bass.com and signed up for the free monthly easy. Look out for lesson while we put everything we have been working on into the context of a real live tune. E-mail me if you have any questions and I will see you next time. Bye.
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